ENERGY ANALYSIS OF REAR DOOR HEAT EXCHANGERS IN DATA CENTERS WITH DYNAMIC WORKLOAD DISTRIBUTION
Abstract
In recent years, applications including IoT (Internet of Things), content delivery, and 5G have created a large demand for low-latency access to data processing and data storage. Traditional centralized data centers weren’t designed with those use cases
in mind. Small data centers such as edge computing data centers and colocation data centers house more than half of all servers across the United States. Rear Door Heat exchangers (RDHx) provide an energy-efficient cooling solution to traditional
CRAC/CRAH - based cooling methods by localizing the heat removal from the rack. With more control over air distribution through a shorter path between the hot air and the heat removal, this cooling method is efficient and predictable and can easily be
implemented into existing data centers. In this study, RDHx implemented in a Edge computing center and Colocation Data center models using commercially available CFD software (6SigmaRoom). TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and Cooling costs of
the data center models are calculated and compared to traditional CRA based cooling methods.